I don't for a moment imagine Brash is a fool, I just expect on the basis of previous experience that, like Douglas, he'll seize whatever opportunity is currently in front of him to promote his ideology.

Maybe Brash will prove me wrong and actually do the job that's been assigned to him, but my expectation is that the "productivity taskforce" will have little to say about productivity and a lot to say about the tax system.

This morning, I see the taskforce's report has been leaked, and the contents are about cutting taxes and universal welfare entitlements (except presumably Superannuation, which is paid to a lot of the govt's supporters), ie the report promotes Brash's ideology and has little to say about productivity but a lot to say about the tax system.

The task-force was negotiated by the ACT Party in their coalition deal with National. Finding out that Dr Brash likes tax cuts has cost taxpayers about half a million dollars.

Yes, it has. And if a dim bulb like me knew the outcome was a foregone conclusion and that it would consist of ideologically-based propaganda, so presumably did everyone involved with setting it up. Once upon a time (and doesn't it seem a long time ago now?), Rodney Hide and his party were very big on getting rid of perqs and not wasting taxpayers' money - how things change once you get your arses on the govt benches, eh?

It'll be interesting to see what the next Labour govt can come up with to top this. Perhaps a productivity taskforce led by Michael Cullen that comes back and tells us it's vital to increase taxes and welfare?

Sunday, November 29, 2009

The National Party members on the committee, led by Bill English, rejected this. They argued that the Reserve Bank should not use such powers to help it achieve price stability, the key goal of monetary policy. Doing so would set New Zealand apart and create cost and confusion in the financial system.

How wrong National was.

Of course, he's talking about a committee that Labour probably had a majority on from 2005-2008 and therefore probably had the numbers to actually do something about monetary policy if it was so concerned about the asset bubbles Oram seems so concerned about himself.

And I just love his last sentence:

It is cutting itself off from the global debate about how to better run the world economy.

Someone should tell Oram that his good friend Phil Goff has already denounced command economics. In any event, economies run themselves Rod. The more political intervention the less efficient they become - you control freak.

Why doesn't he just issue the following disclaimer with his writings: "Oram loves the Left and the Left loves Oram".

Parents should be treating babies and toddlers with more respect, a visiting academic says, and that means talking to infants as if they are adults, never putting them in high chairs or leaving them in car seats, and steering clear of many popular toys.

From day one, early childhood expert Polly Elam says, parents should also consult their baby before picking them up, changing their nappy or taking them on outings. That means talking the baby through what you are about to do, before you do it – and waiting for their response.

If parents skip this consultation, they should later apologise to the baby and explain why they acted hastily.

Is there any hope for the World with garbage like this.

These theories actually belongs in the bottom of a nappy mixed in with all the p*ss and sh*t because that is what these theories are - p*ss and sh*t.

When issues arise in New Zealand we often look for an answer that is far removed from the actual cause of the problem.

Three examples.

Emissions Trading.

Emissions Trading is a gigantic shambles - not caused by climate change because we have had climate change for millions of years - but caused, and then made worse, by politicians. Cause of problem = politicians.

Legal Aid Review

As someone who has some links to the law profession, the Bazley report into legal aid is unsurprising. The problems in Manukau have been well known for years and no one in the legal profession had the guts to do anything about it. But when you create a system that allows it to be milked like a cow; and when standards at law schools slide on the back of affirmative action policies (put in by politicians), bums on seats attitudes (put in by politicians) and examiners failure to fail students (tacitly allowed by politicians so that the bums on seats can prevail), what you get is poorly educated lawyers on a gravy train. Cause of problem = politicians.

Supreme Court judgment recall

What can one say on this story apart from this: we had a perfectly functional appellate court process that was not open to the closeness that New Zealand society inexorably provides. That was called the Privy Council. Some politicians (Clark et al) decided we should scrap that and leave ourselves open to the biases and allegations of tainting that only a very small country at the bottom of the World can. Cause of problem = politicians.

When you look behind these issues they are all ultimately caused by politicians. The legal aid problem isn't the result of bad lawyers, it's the result of bad politicians. Emissions Trading isn't the result of climate change, it's the result of poor politicians. And the Supreme Court story isn't caused by the failure to disclose bias, it was caused by the removal of the Privy Council - a political decision. The best reason for retaining the Privy Council was because we are such a small country that the six degrees of separation paradigm drops back to about two degrees in this country. Everyone knows everyone who knows everyone.

Today we see the falsehood exposed. The 'reporting' which in fact was sermonising in favour of global warminenists was based on a poll carried out in September which showed the majority of Australians in favour of the alarmists and their draconian New World Order taxes on everything productive.

Just two days later, we see the complete turnabout in public opinion as the enormity of the Climategate fraud and swindle begins to sink in. Turnbull is the first public victim of the fraud.

"......poll showing a whopping 60 per cent of Australians are against Kevin Rudd rushing the Emissions Trading Scheme through parliament.

Despite Mr Turnbull insisting the ETS must be passed now - ahead of the UN's Copenhagen summit - the poll overwhelmingly backs his opponents - with 81 per cent of Coalition supporters wanting the vote delayed."

If I were ackers, I wouldn't be getting too cocky about the so-called 'implosion' of the Liberal Party. The Libs were actually on to it before everybody else. If the remarkable turnaround shown in this poll turns into a solid trend, as it likely will, you may well see Mr Rudd thrown out in a landslide next year.

I told you the other day, Aussies don't like being conned and in this instance they surely have.

So the weather is being used as the excuse to set up the new world order. But don't think for one minute that it will stop there. Weather comes and goes but a one world government will hang around forever, like a good old Otago hoar frost.

My pick is that our "commitment" to the cause will mostly involve more government, more tax, less freedom, less sovereignty and having to work harder to make ends meet.

Whilst paying through the nose for a new governing elite who, of course, will only have our best interests at heart. Plus the need to regularly fly to exotic locations to save us from ourselves.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Government ministers were furious, with Assistant Climate Change Minister Greg Combet saying refusal to pass the ETS yesterday could prove only one conclusion. "That is that the extremists, the conspiracy theorists and the climate change sceptics in the Liberal Party have gained ground and are winning this argument."

If any further evidence is needed that Phil Goff is shoring up his right-wing credentials in an attempt to close the gap with National, then here it is.

Socialist John Moore asked a question about Labours’ relationship with the market and Goff responded, “show me a command economy that ever worked”, “the market is the best mechanism to distribute goods” and “Labour saved capitalism”. It seems Goff never really shook the ideology of the fourth Labour Government of the late 1980s that turned New Zealand into one of the rich world’s most unequal societies.

Of course, Goff is from the Right of the Labour Party. He was right there with Clark, Prebble, Douglas and de Cleene during the great reforms of the 80's.

There is only one question that really arises from this speech of Goff's: if he knows this, why does he let his Party preach command economics methodology?

It'll be interesting to hear his reaction when Don Brash and the productivity workforce report to Cabinet this week. Dollars to donuts it'll be the absolutely correct prescription for what NZ needs to stop sliding down the OECD ladder.

But will "whack it on the bill Phil" concur? And I suppose most importantly, will "whack it on the bill Bill" go along with the recommendations?

0.4 and once again it's 0 for 1 with Aamer hitting the stumps! Guptill was completely beaten for pace and movement there, Aamer gets it to come back in off the air and Guptill gets a half stride forward and doesn't cover the line, the thick inside edge cannons onto the middle stump which is flattened 0/1

45.3 and review time here! Doctrove thinks that the ball pitches outside the leg stump, which is the reason he does not give it. Replays suggest that it pitched in line and struck him in line with the middle stump. You call that 'plumb' and McIntosh has to measure the yards back to the pavilion. 112/5

2.2 that was plumb! 138 kph, he bowls it fuller this time and gets it to move back in, Flynn is late to react and defend it and the ball thuds onto his pads in front of middle and leg, Taufel raises the finger 0/2

29.3 from Umar Gul, New Zealand lose a wicket against the run of play and Taylor is furious, he nudges him to short square leg and there's a lot of hesitation in the calling, it looked like Taylor wanted the single, he turns around and Manzoor has just one stump to aim at and he hits the target 87/3

31.5 there was an inside edge and Fulton walks almost the full distance back to the pavilion and thinks of challenging it, too late I'm afraid, this is weird. Gul pitches it on middle and off and the ball skids through and hits him low on the pads, Doctrove raises the finger, Hot Spot showed a thin inside edge and Fulton always seemed in two minds as to what to do. Pakistan are lucky to get this wicket. Why didn't he go upstairs? Search me... 91/4

66.6 down the leg side and taken, Gul bangs it in short and Elliott swivels and shapes to pull it down to fine leg but the ball brushes his gloves and Kamran jogs across and takes it, Taufel raised the finger immediately 153/10

49.5 and Pakistan claim the dangerman of the moment, Asif deserves credit for this, he squares him up outside off and cramps him for room, McCullum gets his bat out and has to play at it, the ball takes the edge and Kamran falls to his right and takes it 115/6

64.6 appeal for an lbw and Taufel raises the finger, O'Brien asks for the review, good bowling, Gul adjusts to a full length on the stumps, the ball lands on middle and off and hits the base of the pad in line with the middle stump, Taufel was right after all 150/9

The lead story in today's Australian newspaper is the impending doom faced by the Liberal Party if it is successful in defeating Krudd's economically disastrous ETS legislation.

Apparently swinging voters in many urban marginal seats are mostly in favour of 'doing their bit' about global warming. The figures quoted seem to back up the story until you see, way down towards the end, that the poll on which the analysis is predicated was taken in September and the election is not due for another year, unless there is a double disolution and that can't happen until at least June.

Adolf recalls something happened since then which might have some effect. Climategate.

So waddya reckon the polls will say when the Libs get off their butts and campaign on the shonky science exposed just this last week?

I had a good laugh over this as I'm acquainted with Ray Comfort from a long time ago. Back in 1980 I gave up employment to become a full-time layabout in Christchurch, and one of the ways a group of us layabouts used to interrupt our longeurs was to go to the Square to heckle the assorted public speakers who held forth on nothing in particular every lunchtime. (Why, yes I was an utterly unlikeable useless sack of shit back then, how did you guess?) Ray was one of these speakers, waving his Bible and exhorting passersby to give up their sinful lifestyles in favour of becoming a Bible-waver.

His attempts at persuasion always had logical holes in them you could drive a bus through, but instead of feeling sorry for him we heckled him mercilessly. Presumably he was fortified by the thought that God would arrange some serious payback come Judgement Day, so Ray could afford to be magnanimous.

I got a closer insight into why he was such a peddler of obvious nonsense when someone gave me his book, "My Friends are Dying." It was about why you shouldn't take drugs. Being a callow yoof at the time, and more to the point permanently flat broke from not working, I had little experience with drugs, but I soon became suspicious of the factual content of the book. Although I didn't have any drugs to speak of, I did have a record player, so when Ray wrote about the terrible evil of rock music, I had some basis for assessing his evidence. Which was stuff like:

1. Lou Reed promotes the murder of politicians in his lyrics to "Heroin:"

When the politicians are all deadAnd their bodies are piled in mounds

2. Mick Jagger was writing about "South-east Asian cocaine" (WTF?) in his lyrics to "Brown Sugar."

The Lou Reed quote is just plain wrong, and anyone who actually listens to Brown Sugar will notice that, while certainly extremely offensive, it's offensive on the basis of fantasising about whipping and fucking black slave girls, not anything to do with drugs.

Eventually I realised: Ray was gullibly writing down whatever junkies told him, without even the most cursory fact-checking like getting hold of the songs he was writing about and having a listen to them.

On the basis of that previous experience, it came as no surprise to find that Ray is currently famous as "Banana Man," for the hilarious YouTube clip in which he "proves" intelligent design theory using a banana. Watch and enjoy.

NB: yes, I am aware that by pointing people to Ray's banana sketch, I am being just as much of a prick as I was in 1980. Leopard, spots, etc.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

The late Professor Augie Auer will be laughing his arse off as he flits about stumming happily on his heavenly harp.

Meanwhile, sacked NIWA guru Dr Jim Slazenger appears to have been caught out by genuine climate scientists, double faulting and engaging in unseemly behaviour guaranteed to bring his sport into disrepute. It's called fiddling the figures. Cooking the books. Bullshitting. Telling lies.

Forget about peer reviews by your mates, Jim. Let's see ALL your research reviewed by your real peers, those who haven't already decided the result before the analysis began. Oh yes, make sure they have proper access to all your raw data and methodology before they start.

Apparently the good folk at NIWA are to deliver their preliminary obfuscation tomorrow. In language nobody will be able to understand.

You've got to hand it to the lads and ladies at transTasman. They know their politics. Here's how they describe the Greens' reaction to yesterday's ETS.

"Labour doesn’t like it…OK, theywouldn’t because it’s not theirs.The Green Party, with their usualmix of residual Kiwi Puritanismand hand-me-down Marxism,doesn’t like it because it doesn’tpunish anyone hard enough."

We all know now that climate change is based on fraudulent data and that the ETS should not have been passed. But lets be realistic. The current piece of crap legislation is still better than the previous piece of crap legislation that Clark and her buddies passed last year.

What we need to do now is to put pressure on to repeal both pieces of legislation and get to a point where the climate change policy is based on open source science rather than closed source politically influenced pseudo science.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

I rarely look at "no right turn". Not because I disagree with most of what he writes (allthough I do) but because he does not permit comments. Blogging for me has sadly become mainly about reading the comments with maybe two or three notable exceptions.

Anyway, his most recent post mentions the retrospective implementation of a law affecting the way new cops are sworn in. It looks to me like they are fixing a cock up and fair enough too I guess (allthough it has to be a guess because as NRT points out it is all being done urgently and without any info).He then goes on to have a pop at those of us that screamed about Clark using retrospective legislation and wondering whether we will scream about the Nats doing it..

In reply to that I would have to say.YES.I for one will scream the house down if National introduce retrospective legislation to avoid having to face Bernard Darnton in court and to legislate their way out of a situation where they got caught blatantly stealing and defrauding the country to prop up their party finances.

Readers should in no way perceive this post as support in any way whatsoever for National.The events of the last 12 months have demonstrated to me that they are no better than the last lot of wankers. The ETS is only the most recent example of rank stupidity that began when they did not hang Cullen and co by their toes for breaching PREFU.The only upside is that Clark is gone.

“Science is not simple,” he says, “and particularly the issues that tend to impact on the public; they’re usually involving complex science. Things like human biology and nutrition, for example, are complex issues. Nutrition represents very complex biology, which is projected by people as very simplistic biology. It’s complex because you have food, which is more than ingredients. Then you have the complexity of the biological organism that eats it, namely the individual, and every person has a different genetic, developmental and physiological make-up. Therefore the interaction between that individual and what they eat can be quite variable.”

Which is why bollocks like the Listener's nutrition column, or Petra Bagust's finger-wagging at us on TV, in which we're told to eat this or not eat that because "studies show..." is exactly that - bollocks. Why? Well, here's the Listener on Gluckman again:

“The media and others are bad at communicating concepts of probability and risk,” says Gluckman, who dislikes the use of phrases such as: “eating food X doubles your risk of disease Y”.

“You’ve got to look at what that means. It might mean nothing if it’s shifting it from one case in 200 million to one case in 100 million. And yet we regularly see that kind of reporting, particularly in relation to food.”

Using a numerator and denominator, rather than percentages or doubling terms illustrates the true impact. “If something increases your risk from one in a 100 to one in 10, [that] is a very big increase in risk. But an increase in risk from one in a million to one in 100,000, which is equally a tenfold increase in risk, is still a very rare risk.”

And yet, how often do you see supposed "scientists" telling you not to eat this, that or the other on the basis of exactly those kind of very rare risks? How often? Do you know? I do - the answer is "Fucking."

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The importance of getting this legislation right cannot be overstated. [The development of an ETS] represents the most significant economic reform since the deregulation of the economy in the late 1980s. Getting this bill right is also important for the environment. Poor policy can also have unintended adverse environmental consequences.”

Moreover, “the legislative process has been rushed and inadequate given the bill’s complexity and significance. The public has not had adequate time to examine and submit on the bill, and it is inevitable that serious mistakes will be made that will adversely affect New Zealanders”.

Thus, “this process has not been conducive to getting such an important bill right nor in getting the cross-party support needed to ensure the stability and longevity of New Zealand’s ETS”.

This was Nick Smith last year after Labour had taken a year to pass its ETS, with a number of external fora and consultation periods before the Bill was introduced.

Grant Robertson calls is "breathtaking hypocricy". As I said in the introduction, sometimes even the Labour Party is right.

The problem here is actually very simple and can be summed up in one word: politicians.

They decided we needed an intergovernmental panel. They paid the scientists on it. They then pork-barrelled their way to implementing ETS schemes. One in particular runs giant funds management companies that make billions on green investments.

The politicians here could not wait to implement an ETS. The other politicians at the time said theirs would be better – not that it’s a dumb idea, but theirs would be better. Then the others got in power and made a very bad situation a lot worse. Then Maori politicians sold their people down the river for a trip to Copenhagen and a few trees. I could go on but I’m sure you all get the picture.

The problem with most of the issues in life is politicians. They butt into everything. They change health, tax, employment, education, superannuation etc every election. All this puts enormous cost on businesses and families. I’ve seen it first hand in my consulting business.

Folks, the problem is not the ETS. If it wasn’t the ETS it would be the Foreshore and Seabed or bidding wars over who is toughest on crime or anything else. The problem is politicians.

ACT says we should have 99 of them. That would be a start. I figure about 50 is all we need. We don’t need them. They are the problem, always have been, always will be.

That is why Reagan said government was the problem not the solution. Governments and politicians are not constructive, they’re destructive.

Charles of WUWT offers a new and interesting theory of the file: that the file was not “stolen”, it was “found”. Seehere. Charles’ epithet: “Never assume malice where stupidity will do”.

Here’s his scenario.

The collation of files was made by the university in connection with the FOI appeal – an appeal that they were going to thoroughly document because of all the publicity during the summer. They then used the intranet server to share the file among interested parties for the FOI review on Nov 13.

And then between Nov 13 and Nov 17, someone came along and found this astonishing file sitting on the server. Sound impossible?

Read last summer’s posts on the “Mole” at CRU. Phil Jones had refused to provide station data claiming that it was covered by all sorts of confidentiality agreements (though he couldn’t find the agreements and couldn’t remember who they were with.

One day in late July, I discovered that they had left station data versions from 2003 and 1996 on their server – without webpage links but accessible all the same. They were stale versions of the requested data, but this data was supposedly hugely “confidential”. They were just sitting in cyberspace waiting for someone to download.

Charles hypothesizes that that’s what happened here. No hacker, no mole.

This theory could be disproved one way or another by the university’s FOI department. I’m sure that someone will ask them about their role, if any, in compiling the zip file.

History will record two of Western Civilisation's greatest ever follies occuring in quick succession - both caused by socialists.

First it was the phenomenon of ninja loans and junk bonds wherein good clean capitalism gave way to socialist interference and millions of loans to people with no incomes, no jobs and no assets. These worthless pieces of paper were bundled up and sold as securities around the world, creating a commercial binge fueled by corporate greed.

Before those financial shock waves have receded we find ourselves being plunged into a further multi-billion dollar disaster in the form of Emission Trading Schemes based on a foundation of junk science and bogus predictions of impending doom with the creation of so called carbon credits. These worthless pieces of paper are being bundled up and sold as securities around the world, creating a commercial binge fueled by corporate greed.

Adolf will predict that his beloved National Party will take a king hit in the polls over this incredible piece of ill timed and poorly managed folly.

The only question worth asking is 'Where will the unhappy voters go?' They can't go to Labour or the Greens because their version of the folly would have been worse.

I'd say that the ACT Party should be rubbing its hands with glee as the punters forget about Rodney Hide's trip away with his bit of fluff and focus on ACT's vociferous and right minded opposition to all this fraudulent AGW and ETS nonsense.

Monday, November 23, 2009

We did the usual: Te Papa, Cable Car up to Botanical Gardens, shopping in Cuba Street and Lambton Quay, dinner at a fabulous Malaysian eatery in Ghuznee Street (KK Malay) and a visit to Parliament today.

But the highlight of the trip was a visit to the Wellington Airport restrooms this afternoon.

When you see a headline like this, you know we are stuffed.Our future is now being set in concrete.Race based politics and crooked science.Talk about a double whammy.John Key's leadership is a disgrace to our country.

However, "not writing about it" was before I realised that a group of women at my workplace, some of whom will earn more than I do for a similar job (through longer service), featured in the local newspaper in a protest claiming they're being made to work for free until the end of the year because I, along with the other testicle-equipped, am supposedly ripping them off for 12% of their "deserved" salary.

I could forgive this. Many people fail to understand what the term "average" means and there is a general ignorance in society of how to interpret statistics, so it's not that surprising people should make the mistake. What's unforgivable: it's definitely unsurprising they should make that mistake when the women's group rep organising the protest is a fucking social sciences lecturer.

A qualified social scientist knows how to interpret statistics. A qualified social scientist ought to be someone whose views on how to interpret statistics can be trusted. And a qualified social scientist who says an average figure equals individual results is like a doctor who says antibiotics will cure a viral infection: either too stupid to live, or has some ulterior motive. In the case of this social scientist, I'm picking the ulterior motive "self-interest" rather than stupidity:

Sunday, November 22, 2009

This global warming nonsense is going to provide months of fun for some of us.The piece below is copied/ ihimaera'd directly from a comment left at the most excelent Bishop Hill blog. It describes the timeline for a FOI which is much the same as our feeble system for making govt departments release info. At the bottom is the email sent by Phil Jones who it turns out is one of the key climate liars in the UK. You will note he is asking Michael Mann (remember him, the hockey stick liar?) to delete emails directly related to the FOI.

Oh, the phone number? It is Phil Jones direct line. Be sure to call him and thank him when our government saddles us with a massive new government department and tax regime cooked up because some nerds in east anglia have conspired to con the world.No word yet from Bomber over at Tumeke, our thoughts are with him. Bwahahahahaha.

David Holland has also made FOI inquiries to Keith Briffa, a lead author of AR4 chapter 6. Here's a progress report documenting:May 5 - FOI request

Drs Keith Briffa and Timothy Osborn of your Climatic Research Unit served as lead authors on the IPCC Fourth Assessment, which by international agreement was required to be undertaken on an comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis.1 On 31 March 2008, I asked Dr Briffa for important specific information, not so far released, on his work as a lead author to which I have had no reply or acknowledgement, but have, through other FoI enquiries, been given a copy of his email dated 1 April 2008, to several other IPCC participants including Dr Philip Jones, and to which my letter was attached. He told his colleagues his response to me would be brief when he got round to it. Also included in the documents released to me is an email dated 14 March 2008 to Dr Briffa, among others, from Susan Solomon, Co-Chair of WGI, advising the addressees not to disclose information beyond that (which I consider inadequate) already in the public domain.

Accordingly, I hereby request the following information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and/or the Environmental Information Regulations 2004:

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’thave his new email address.We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!CheersPhil

This morning Adolf posted on the unmasking of the Global Warmenising Conspiracy here.

Powerline has further information just to hand and it is startling. The conspirators have destroyed the evidence of their wrong doing.

"Mike, Can you delete any emails you may have with Keith re AR4? ["AR4" is common shorthand for the U.N. IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, which was released in 2007.] Keith will do likewise. He's not in at the moment - minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise."

These guys are buggered, now the internet is on to them. It's clearly not a case of hacking but rather of a massive leak by a disgusted whistle blower.

Somehow Adolf never got to participate in a bonding session like this one.

"The teenager and then 26-year-old teacher "bonded" when putting the school yearbook together and had sex only once after classes for the year had finished but while the student was still technically enrolled."

Powerline's John Hinderaker writes a superlative analysis of the recently hacked e-mails of the world's most prominent global warmenisers. The e-mails are conclusive and devastating. The world has been conned by a bunch of pseudo scientists fronted by a B grade US presidential no-hoper. The gas bag at last has been pricked.

The whole scientific basis of global warming alarmism is flawed and indeed fraudulent.

The much vaunted IPCC report is baseless.

Here's the stand out line:-

"It, along with the rest of the email archive, makes an utter mockery of the alarmists' claim that the science of global warming is settled in their favor. On the contrary, the conclusion an observer is likely to draw from the CRU archive is that the climate alarmists are making up the science as they go along and are fitting facts to reach a predetermined conclusion rather than objectively seeking after truth. What they are doing is politics, not science."

New Zealand should demand a rigorous review of all the so-called 'accepted science' attached to global warming hysteria and as an interim measure we should IMMEDIATELY withdraw from Kyoto and the economic suicidal folly which is an Emissions Trading Scheme.

Not for the students, who are expected to perform honestly, submit original work, and follow the rules. University staff will work hard to ensure students sit exams in a fair, honest and proper way.

But plagiarism is ok for the staff. In fact, the more senior you are, the better it is to copy other people's work.

Professor Witi Ihimaera is a man whose work I thought was good. But it turns out that he has been a plagiarist, and has incorporated other people's work in his literature, and had profited financially, professionally and socially from it.

But, I hear you say, maybe Professor Witi Ihimaera should be shown some forgiveness. Perhaps he should be shown a way in which he can make amends? Isn't that what universities strive to do?

Well, the University of Auckland certainly didn't do that when it came to Dr Paul Buchanan, who famously told a student they weren't good enough and they shouldn't expect any easy rides. Buchanan had to go to court to get his reputation back.

So on the one hand, they punish a lecturer for demanding high standards from original work, and on the other hand, they fail to punish a professor for one of the biggest sins in academia - plagiarism.

The University of Auckland has, like it or not, sent a strong and powerful message about itself - they are pathetic eunuchs, and intellectually bankrupt. They don't deserve financial contributions from alumni.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Federated Farmers, most of whom received numerous propaganda from ACT at the last election on the cost an ETS would put on them, have now done an about turn.

It's true that a tax on carbon won't necessarily affect the weather per se, but as a change-inducing component, it could change behaviour over the long term. A tax on carbon is also fiscally neutral.

Fed Farmers now agree. If they'd just voted ACT last year their 300,00+ votes might have stopped the ETS in its tracks. Now they'll have to wait and see.

If Fed Farmers read this take note: if you vote for who you always have you'll continue to get what you always got.

And of course there is better reason why a carbon tax is better than a rortingscam scheme:

Trading of emission permits around the world will become a financial rort that fails to reduce carbon emissions - and will ultimately be scrapped in favour of a simple carbon tax, a former senior official in the Clinton administration has forecast. Robert Shapiro, former US undersecretary of commerce and author of Futurecast, predicted that the US Senate would reject the emissions trading scheme proposed by President Obama, which is now before it.

I always find Wellington local politics a bit of a mystery. It is a shitty little town with dreadful weather populated by grey drones that won the eternal Lottery when the Auckland merchants and Canterbury farmers compromised about where to put the government.This story about some clown trying to bribe students to join a bus protest nearly made me cough up my weetbix. It is right up there with shouting KFC for retards on polling day.

"Today we held a piece of street theatre in Auckland's Cornwall Park involving an unfortunate farmer being whipped by a broom-wielding witch as he hauled a trailer bearing a cheque for $5 billion dollars made out to Russians and signed by Helen Clark on behalf of New Zealand taxpayers.

"That's the ETS money that will be sent to the UN - which will, in turn, pay it to the Russians because they have large forests. New Zealand farmers alone will pay $1,200 million into the scheme.

"This is sheer lunacy - New Zealand emits 0.02 percent of world Co2 emissions. Nothing we do will change the world's weather.

"The ETS scheme will cost the nation tens of millions of dollars, cost 22,000 Kiwis their jobs and not do anything to mitigate global warming.

"We need smart green policies, not this madness. The Germans and Canada have said they will not wreck their economies to meet Kyoto obligations, and nor should we.

"We need to grow our economy - not shrink it with this nonsense. Only a country with a strong economy can engage in smart green polices to protect our environment. ACT will scrap both ETS and Kyoto," Mr Hide said.

Adolf deplores the folly which is the ETS - no matter whose version. It is a disastrous nonsense based on entirely spurious junk science which every day is further debunked.

Yesterday saw TV3 run a story which was picked up by one or two lustily lame brained blogs.

Nick Smith has given away the DOC estate to the Maoris. Or so the story went.

In vain did Adolf seek some reporting in the egregious Herald on the subject. Perhaps Mr Murphy fears being sued by NgaiTahu so has decided to set the story to one side. The Bros are rich fullas now, eh Tim?

Not so derelict however are the people at Stuff. Here we see a good report on the events leading up to the fuss made by TV3 about claims National is about to give away vast swathes of the conservation estate to Iwi in return for the Maori Party supporting National's version of the biggest pile of bullshit since tulips became common currency.

It turns out no deal has been done. Negotiations are underway though and it seems Iwi might be permitted to crop some small parts of the dock estate. That is to say, plant the land in pines and harvest the trees when mature.

That does not seem to Adolf to be particularly unreasonable or noxious. There is no evidence to suggest they will be given title to land. Minister Smith says other interests already enjoy similar arrangements but these cases are not identified.

Politics is all about the art of negotiation and if Adolf were in the National chair on this one he would be locking in Maori Party support for mining the DOC estate in return for the aforementioned largess.

Then you could watch Goff swallow his Adam's apple and the Greens spew blood.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Dick Hubbard announces his intention to stand for Auckland City Council to protect all those poor innocent lefties from the barbaric hordes set to rape and pillage the place when John Banks is elected Lord Mayor.

Adolf's only enduring memory of Big Ears' tenure as Mayor was that glorious cartoon which showed Hubbard shaking hands with Hucker. Hubbard was thinking "Motherhucker" and Hucker was thinking something similar, in the vernacular of Hone Harawira. Can you see this fellow running the city? Where has he been?

Gilbert and Sullivan could not have produced a better show than the race for control of Auckland Super City. John Bank's ribs will need physio for a month.

No doubt by now everyone else has noticed this piece in the Guardian re new educational initiatives in Spain. As with all educational reform, the proposed pedagogical benefits are disputed:

Commentators questioned why the poorest region in Spain was paying for a campaign to promote onanism.

I'm in two minds about it really. On the one hand (sorry), as a kid I was crap at wanking. By the time I started to become genuinely useful to myself, girls were available and the utility value of masturbation was in a nose-dive, except in the "mutual" sense in which it would have helped a hell of a lot to have known how girls wank. So I can see there would have been a real personal benefit in the education system teaching me best practice for digitally servicing either sex.

But on the other hand, one thinks back to one's teachers at the time, and shudders at the thought...

The continuing Hone Harawira story has a certain soap opera touch about it. Nevertheless it is fascinating to speculate how it might all end up. I see it this way .....

Scenario #1 ... No change. Hone stays with the Maori Party who, in the spirit of Aroha, forgive their errant MP after extracting from him a promise to 'behave' (whatever that means). One week ago I would have bet money on this. Now the comments of Sharples, Turia and Winiata have made this unlikely .... not impossible but unlikely. If they give way now their leadership will have been undermined to the point where Hone will walk over them.

Scenario #2 ... Hone resigns his seat and exits stage left never to be seen again except at Waitangi where he and/or his relations can, once again, turn what should be day of celebration into a day of confrontation. Possible but Hone has never walked away from anything.

Scenario #3 ... Hone walks and resigns his seat to stand again as an Independent. Maori Party also contests seat. Possible but unlikely. The Maori Party vote would split and, in all probability, Labour's Kelvin Davis would win the seat. Davis is already a List MP having stood against Hone in the last election. He is seen as one of Labour's rising stars.

Scenario #4 ... Hone walks and resigns his seat to stand again as a Independent with the Maori Party sitting out the election. My assessment is that Hone would bolt home. Would he achieve much as an Independent MP? Reality is the National/ACT/MP/UF coalition would still have the numbers. We might see him as sidelined and ineffectual but Hone would see himself as the voice for Maori grievances, real and imagined.

Scenario #5 .... Phil Goff puts Hone up against a wall and shoots him !!!!!!!!!!!!

Pablo at Kiwipolitico has another interesting post on terrorism. Following is the comment I posted over there. I think the war against the jihadists is far from won even though it appears we are winning the battle in Iraq and are pressing forward in Afghanistan and Waziristan.

In that measure I would say that the jihadists are losing, which is what prompted me to open the post with the quote from a veteran SOLIC professional. However, when it comes to the likes of Pakistan, the Sudan or Afghanistan, then the issue remains very much open.

A fascinating post and discussion as usual. I wish I had more time to consider and post more appropriate and well thought responses.

I disagree with the last gasp of a dying man quote but understand why you included it. Gavrip Principio, Eire, Israel, the Boer and any number of other examples during the retreat of the British empire are sufficient to demonstrate the effectiveness of terrorism as a weapon. The point is well made by the Tamils & Al Qaeda in Iraq that when the terrorists turn on their own population rather than the ruling class they are losing.

Andrew W makes a good point that politically weak governments are prone to manipulate the spectre of terrorism for their own ends.

And weak politicians simply choose appeasement over hard decisions. That is what we are seeing with Obama.

I am interested in peoples views on the Clash of Civilisations. This post is an interesting contextual first chapter but it must be leading somewhere. Personally I see jihadist terrorism as being a multi generational conflict. Until those Islamic nations have developed and educated and prosperous middle class living reasonably democratically there will be no sustained peace. Iraq represented a country much further along that path than Afghanistan which is why it was chosen. Oil and Bush unfinished business with Saddam were not sufficient reasons in and of themselves to justify war. The possibility of WMD being provided to and used by terrorists and the opportunity to provide an example democracy to the rest of the Arab world were the reasons for going into Iraq.

Leaving Afghanistan as the sole front in the war against Jihadist terrorism would mean inevitable defeat due to the nature and backwardness of the country.

imho the jihadists are trying to overthrow our Western democracy and it is legitimate for us to take the fight into countries that are not ruled democratically or at least with popular support.

So I look forward to the next chapter where Pablo develops the clash of civilisations theme, either agreeing or disagreeing or in a different direction.

Is it a lamb roast?Warehou and chips?Paua frittersWhitebait fritters?Pavlova?Muttonbirds?Bluff oysters?or in New Zealand a country of many unique plates?

For my money, and speaking as someone presently living in the UK the lamb roast and fish and chips in any form are simple english imports with better quality base ingredients. oysters, whilst delicious from bluff, again, are an international dish. The ozzies try to nick our pavlova for their own but it would definitely make the national pudding for the number of times it graced our christmas table (every time). I have never tasted mutton birds and I guess nor have many non mainlanders so think that, whilst certainly exclusive, does not make the cut for a national dish. Paua fritters have always mystified me. At the takeaway or beating the crap out of an abalone and mixing rubber strips into a fritter is not my idea of a delicacy. Mush or chewy they dont make the cut.

There is only one truly New Zealand dish that I remember from childhood that I have never tasted anywhere else in the world. In some places I have eaten what are called whitebait fritters but they are basically deepfried chinese sardines and not on the same planet.

There is nothing on this world like the taste of whitebait fritters in the morning, and only one country that delicacy is truly available in.